Stable Release Updates types proposal (was Re: Fedora Board Meeting Recap 2010-03-11)

[Jon Masters]

On Sat, 2010-03-13 at 21:48 +0100, Thomas Janssen wrote:

> Why, do you think, should just a single user change to Fedora, away
> from Ubuntu or any other Distro? Because we're blue?

If the only reason to choose Fedora over Ubuntu is because Fedora shoves
out updates at a higher pace into stable releases, then something is
severely wrong. There are many good reasons to choose either distro. I
happen to quite like both, for different reasons. Fedora moves new
features into rawhide at a higher pace, and Ubuntu is something that I
could see a newcomer having a lot of success with. But none of that has
anything to do with what should be happening in stable Fedora releases.

> the same just in RPM? Some "slow-it-down-people" do really think that
> a half baken X-server 1.7beta will make users of other distros go away
> because they use just 1.6, or our release kernel is 2.6.31.3 and
> others have 2.6.31.1 trough release-time?

I don't care whether some new hardware gets enabled through an update. I
would rather that happen in rawhide and the users who can't use the
hardware in the stable release have to wait an average of 3 months in
the worst case that there isn't some level of support available now. Few
other Operating Systems move at that kind of pace anyway. I do care that
regressions in the kernel, X, or some other subsystem might break things
that users who are supported are relying on, just to enable other stuff.
To me, the fear of regressions outweighs any possible other benefit.

This isn't Enterprise Linux. I don't need a support period covering the
equivalent of 14 Fedora release cycles, I am fully happy with some
considerable churn every 6 or 12 months on my desktop or laptop in the
interest of being up to date with the latest tech, but I am not happy to
have that churn be on a normal non-upgrade day when I expect my laptop
to work (and an update just before a meeting to be safe with respect to
that laptop running a presentation immediately afterward). Somewhat
shockingly, some people do use Fedora for day to day stuff.

> You will never get a single user of the other distros if you dont have
> anything special to offer.

Fedora offers a higher rate of new and experimental features. Those
should be kept in rawhide *where they belong*, for 6 months, until they
have had some decent testing and are ready to be released. Users are
users, they are not guinea pigs to be experimented upon.

Jon.